Legal Precedent: Virtual Goods are real in the Netherlands

Yet another precedent seems to have been established for the legal protection of virtual goods.

This time it's not SecondLife but Runescape that came before the courts. This article on the Radio Netherlands website recounts how a 13 year old boy was bullied by two slightly older boys who then ended up in court.

This case has a very interesting twist that I believe we will see repeated in the future:

The court dismissed the defence lawyer's argument and cited an earlier ruling that electricity can be considered a material object for the purposes of criminal law and stealing electricity is theft. (emphasis is mine) The court ruled that the same principle can be applied in this case and stealing virtual Runescape items is theft as the owner was forced to hand over his possessions.

Interesting logic and one that's hard to argue against. I can't wait to see this prosecution angle tried in the United States.

Why you DON'T want to own virtual goods...

or I should more accurately say, why you AND Blizzard don't want you to own them.

Today brought a good article from Dave Kosak of gamespy that explains in layman's terms the myriad of issues that might arise if you actually owned virtual goods from games like Runescape or World of Warcraft (trademarks belong to their owners, etc., etc.)

Found here, this article has some great examples of the legal ramifications that might result if you actually owned your leet loot:

Let's run a thought experiment and say that you do own your virtual epic sword of double damage. It's yours, and you're allowed to sell it. It has monetary value. Technically, a series of Bad Things(TM) can now happen:

1. Because your sword has real-world value, you should technically report it as earnings come tax time. Did you earn $4700 worth of lewt while raiding this year? Some of that money belongs to the government.

2. Wait a second, acquiring the sword was based on a random-drop loot table, and you pay a monthly fee to play. That means every time you kill a boss, you're technically gambling. All your local gambling laws now come into play.

3. Uh oh, one month later the game developer decides that swords of double damage are overpowered and ruin the game. The item is "nerfed" to only do 20% more damage instead of 100%. Suddenly it drops in value. But you had 20 of those swords on the auction house! You've just taken a huge financial loss! Can you now sue the developer?

Good stuff right? Easy to understand right? Those are only the beginning. Without thinking too hard most of us could probably extend the list without too much effort:

1. Sales tax liability for the vendor if your items have real monetary value
   
2. Sales tax liability for you if you were to sell your Purple geared death gnome to someone else
   
3. Supply and demand issues when players can sell items outside of the game
4. If you lose money on your items (see Dave's point number 3, above), does that mean that you can claim gambling losses for your monthly WoW subscription when your guild is having a bad streak

All in all, a good read. Now where did I keep that list of virtual law issues?

Terrorists in WoW? You're kidding, right?

I'm speechless:

The US government has begun a project to develop ways to spot terrorists who are using virtual worlds. link

The article on the BBC's website is one of many dedicated to the emerging story of our nation's national security apparatus spinning itself into a virtual frenzy (sorry, I couldn't resist) over the possibility of evil-doer's using WoW or SecondLife to plan for an execute attacks in the real world. Some researcher actually got the government to pony up money for him to get a full-time job playing WoW. Please, someone tell me this is a joke. I'm sorry, that sharp stabbing pain in your forehead is what massive, funded stupidity feels like.

There are so many things wrong with this plan that I'm having a hard time keeping track of them all:

1. All of the most popular MMORPG and SL have a recurring monthly fee. That means you need a credit card. A credit card means you need (wait for it.... wait for it...) a credit card account. This gives law enforcement a terrific head start in trying to track down the alledged perpetrators. Remember, for a terrorist cell to use these techniques, every member of the cell would need an account... every account would need a bogus credit card that continued to be funded month after month. Does anyone else see any problems with this? Ok.. sticklers for details might argue that in SL's case there are other forms of payment but by and large, those also involve registration and connection to a bank account.
   
   
2. WoW, Runescape and virtually all MMORPGs don't allow the users to upload content. SL does but its the exception. Without the ability to upload content (things like maps, plans, diagrams, etc.) these virtual worlds become nothing more than very expensive and very difficult email or instant messaging systems. It is far far far easier to create fake and free email and IM accounts on other platform than virtual worlds.
   
   
3. These games and virtual worlds are amongst the most processor and graphics intensive applications available for Macs and PCs... does the US government really think that terrorists are continuing to keep their hardware up to date in order to be using these systems. It just begs belief.
   
   
4. High speed connections are always required. Wouldn't it make more sense to plan meetings and exchange messages using disposable cell phones that can be purchased with cash? Low tech is more prevalent so its use by disadvantaged groups would be more relevant.
   
   
5. These platforms have a significant learning curve. No self respecting terrorist wants to be referred to as a noob because he can't edit his appearance or doesn't know how to /dance.
   
   
6. All of the VWs utilitize extensive logging for technical support, griefing and loot/goods transfer. Any evil-doer that uses these system would have to know that they were leaving tracks all over the place with every mouse stroke. They might not care if they were going to be fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins but it does increase the risk of capture and failure prior to their big date with destiny.

If you'd like to stay on top of this, just google the project's name .

Business week piles on SL feeding frenzy

As if Second Life wasn't getting enough press lately, Business Week has this article that goes into more of the teething pains that advertisers are experiencing setting up shop on the virtual wide web (tm).

There are some pretty breathless numbers in the article:

The three-year-old Web-based world has more than one million "residents" who spent $9 million in October on virtual land, products, and services. And while advertising's traditional outlets are losing eyeballs, so far this year the population of Second Life has increased 995% -- a growing potential consumer audience for marketing messages.

The part that I thought most interesting was the author's interpreation of Philip Rosedale's (CEO of Linden Labs) definition of Second Life:

But Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, says the supporting technology is continually advancing. "Second Life is improving in resolution and functionality at the rate of Moore's Law. The real world isn't getting better by the day." Rosedale views Second Life not as a multiplayer online role-playing game, like World of Warcraft, or in the same category as Will Wright's forthcoming Spore, which allows players to design their own species. Rather, he sees it as a new social-networking platform, like MySpace (NWS ). (emphasis is mine)

SL is certainly not a game in the traditional sense of the word. No keeping score (other than money I guess but that's just like First Life, right?), no 'levels' and no bad guys... unless you count the growing vandals that continue to be a problem for SL.

The article can be found here.

Second Life's back-end

As Virtual worlds come and go we're still figuring out how to build (and probably more importantly) scale these things.

There's an interesting article over on the O'Reilly website that has an interview with Cory Ondrejka and Ian Wilkes of Linden Labs regarding their back-end db experiences and their plans for the future.

Check it out here.

Virtual Travel

What is a virtual world?

Do the simulated economies of on-line virtual worlds allow modeling of real economies?

The author of this paper thinks so. In the course of asking the question, normal issues of definition arrives one of them being "what constitutes a virtual world? The author outlines five specific attributes that I'll paraphrase below:

1. Interactivity
2. Persistence
3. Mass
4. Multimedia
5. Productivity
   

Interactivity: It's accessed remotely (i.e. by an internet connection) and simultaneously by a large number of people, with the actions of one person being visible to, and affecting the actions of, other people.

Persistence: the virtual world continues to exist whether anyone is using it or not; it
remembers the location of people and things, as well as the ownership of objects

Mass: this attribute refers to both the virtual world having achieved mass-market ( large number of users) and the physical meaning of mass, i.e. ‘weight,’ it's bound by physical rules such as impenetrability, gravity, etc.

Multimedia: each user interfaces with the environment through an avatar, or inworld physical manifestation, using multiple sensory inputs such as graphics, text, and audio; however, this need not necessitate a first-person interface. Thus, textbased environments such as multi-user dungeons (MUDs),5 while they may encourage economic behavior as well, are not considered.

Productivity: each user has the capacity to contribute to the type or number of goods and services within the environment, either through offering specific services to other users, combining resource goods to create other goods, or through retrieving resources from environment-generated phenomena. Since chat-based environments would not produce the kind of economic behavior sought—productive behavior—they would be excluded.

Over all, I generally like the list. It's only the last item, productivity, that I have trouble with. In order for a virtual world to be realistic or enjoyable, I'm not sure that that its citizens have for other members of the virtual world. I suppose that at one level coming into a virtual world to only be a consumer (i.e. purchasing services or objects created by others) adds to overall productivity as it brings money into the virtual economy that allows other members to be productive.

What do you think the attributes of an online virtual world are?